Our plan was to head straight to the famous Land’s End signpost to mark the occassion, but as fate would have it our arrival coincided with that of another end-to-ender who, together with about 50 well wishers including his very own troupe of Morris Dancers, monopolised the signpost for what seemed like an eternity. After about 20 minutes of standing around watching this group attempting to break a world record by posing in every possible configuration for a group photo, each formation faithfully recorded on no less than 25 cameras, our patience began to wear thin. We finally conceded that we had suffered the ultimate gazumption and, when construction commenced on a human pyramid of Egyptian proportions, headed instead to the nearby bar for a celebratory champagne.

As with the completion of any significant objective, a sense of achievement did not automatically overwhelm us. We had not, by a long stretch, broken any speed records, as we subsequently found out at the John O’Groats to Lands End exhibition which celebrates the most expeditous end-to-end journeys in an endless number of categories – walking, running, cycling, naked walking, walking with a door strapped to your back, walking backwards, running backwards, walking whilst hitting a golf ball with a 9 iron, roller blading, unicycling, pogo-sticking, oldest, youngest…and driving a car (hah!). The centerpiece of the exhibition was an video presentation filmed from a camera mounted on the dashboard of a landrover which recorded all 857 miles of motorway between J’OG and LE, all condensed into 8 minutes. I couldn’t help but feel that it missed the point altogether.

So with an official time of 136 days, it would seem that we are not in particularly esteemed company, but then again, we did not take the shortest possible route, that which follows the roads and which is so heartily celebrated here at Lands End. No, we added over 300 miles to the journey by avoiding roads at all costs…and we ascended and decended enough hills and mountains to equate to, if you’ll forgive me the hackneyed and slightly innappropriate comparison, at least eight Everests.

And we decided very early on that there was little point in walking across this country without stopping to take a look at places along the way. In consequence, our final tally of 136 days includes no less than 45 days that included no walking with any particular directional intent at all, whether it was to visit a place of interest, soak up some local atmosphere or simply recover from various ‘wear and tear’ injuries.

In doing so we discovered a Britain that is full to overflowing with generous, hospitable, charming, interesting people…and just one gold-plated, award-winning twat (for those not in the UK, that rhymes with “cat”, not “what”!). The latter is a blog in itself which doesn’t deserve writing, but to the former, and to everyone who has offered their support in words, deeds and sponsorship we owe a huge debt of gratitude, for without such support our experience would not have been nearly as wonderful.

So, was it all worth it? An emphatic yes…without a doubt the best thing we have done in our lives so far, not just for the fabulous places we’ve seen or the fantastic people we’ve met, but also for the fact that undertaking something that completely removes you from your usual lifestyle challenges your whole sense of self. We had not realised how much we had pigeon-holed ourselves, nor how stifled we had become, until we started this walk – suddenly our whole identity had everything to do with the challenge we were undertaking…and nothing to do with the lives we left behind in London. It’s hard to explain, but this, together with an abundance of thinking time along the way, really opens your mind to possibilities that it would normally be completely shut to.

The question now is, what next? All I know is that life is for living, not for ruts and routine!

We would like to thank the following people (in no particular order), who have each provided enormously welcome support to us, each in their own special way:

David Marks of VKA Business Development, Ian Fowler & Andy Planner, London, Ike Okosa of Swoop Media, Simon & Samantha Waugh (& the Tent Fairies!), Clydesdale Bank, Marie Renwick at The Clachan B&B, Mike at the Tomdoun Hotel and everyone that we met there, The Drovers Inn at Inverarnan, Karen & Bruce Cannon of Polmont, Peter Jones & Jane Kenhard, and all at Saul Junction Marina, Sam & Kate Rush (and family) of Clovelly, Mick at The Harbour Inn, Upper Apsley, Paul & Sandra Morgan and everyone at The Star, Penkridge, Linwater Caravan Park, The North Inn, Pendeen and everyone that we met there, The Crask Inn, Paul Cashmore-Thornley and Matt Coupe in Barlaston, Knap House Holiday Activity Centre in Northam, The White Cottage tea-rooms in Gargrave, and my parents, Brian and Isabel Laurance (for many things, but in particular the wonderful surprise awaiting us at the end of this journey in the form of a wonderful stay at the Land’s End Hotel!).

I’m sure to have missed somebody, for which I offer the humblest of apologies in advance.

Lastly, anyone interested in reading the full story of our adventures, please keep an eye on our blog (www.lilredtent.wordpress.com)
- at some point I intend to complete the 20 or so unfinished/unpublished blog posts currently hiding in my phone, plus a dozen more that are in my head awaiting the opportunity to be bashed out on a keyboard that’s bigger than a credit card!

Until we meet again,

Very kind regards

Stuart (& Jas) Laurance

For those of you who have waited to make sure we finished before donating, please visit out JustGiving site www.justgiving.com/preciousmemories (it just occurred to me that we could raise money for breast cancer by changing just two letters!), or contact us directly by return email.

After enjoying two rest days hunkering down in every pub that the historic stone village had to offer (each one of which claims some some tenuous Bronte link; “Reverand Bronte ate here”, “The Bronte’s talentless, drunkard brother fell off a bar stool here”, “Charlotte & Emily teased their sister Anne about being far less famous here”, and so on) and, after the weather failed to relent, we decided that some B- road walking to Hebden Bridge was the best thing for it.

Hebden Bridge is a lively and pretty village nuzzled in a deep and steep sided valley. As a consequence of its topography, the town centre is narrow and compact and there is a complete absence of vacant flat ground upon which an enterprising local might otherwise offer camping facilities for the significant number of walkers that pass through the town. There was nothing for it then but to while away the daylight hours (daylight in this instance being a euphemism for the period between dawn and dusk during which a grey half-light seeps through rolling black clouds) in a very well appointed pub called “Hole in t’ Wall” (pronounced in the style of Monty Python’s infamous “Hole in t’road”). Having enjoyed our recent dry foot swagger on tarmac, as opposed to frog-kicking our way through the thick mud of the Pennine way, we had purchased an AA Road Atlas with the ambitous intention of finding a flat and straight B-road leading from Hebden Bridge to Lands End as a substitute for our originally planned route to the west and then down the mountainous Offa’s Dyke Path along the Welsh Border.  Unfortunately, most B-roads are anything but straight, rarely cover the distance between A and B, and are almost never oriented in a north south direction. As a consequence, we may as well have planned our route by consulting our plates of Fettucini alla Arabiata.  By 11pm we had abandoned the task, liberated the pages of the atlas that covered all latitudes south of Hebden Bridge and left “T’Hole” to find a suitable place to pitch our tent under the cover of darkness in the local municipal park.

We awoke the following morning to the tinny percussion of a council ranger picking up discarded beer cans nearby our tent. He was surprisingly unperturbed by our presence and said good morning like he was the proprietor of a huge grassy B&B. Nevertheless, the rule of urban wild camping is that the tent gets packed up ASAP, so by 7am there was no evidence of our temporary abode and we sat at a conveniently located picnic table eating our breakfast.

We rejoined the Pennine Way at Marsden, just two days out from it’s Southern terminus at Edale. Early on on the first of those days we met Steve, a late middle aged electrical engineer from Southampton who was also walking end-to-end North to South for charity (<a href=”http://www.steveslongwalk.org
“>www.steveslongwalk.org</a>).  He had set out from John O’Groats more than a month after we had, so it was mildly embarrassing to find ourselves at the same spot on a lonely moor in the Peak District. To be fair, the route he had taken through Scotland was probably a little more direct and easier under foot than our ups and downs along the West Coast and, unlike us, he was probably less resolved to make the walk just as much about discovering the little towns along the way rather than just the space between them.

We were soon crossing Kinder Scout, a high moorland plateau North of Edale,  famous for being the focus of a mass trespass in 1932 which led to an overhaul of British access laws and, subsequently, the birth of the Pennine Way and the many other trails that were to follow.  For this reason it is undeniably a very special place, but unfortunately our acsent to its summit from Snake Pass coincided with a cinder-grey electrical storm, which pelted us with icy bullets of rain and blinding flashes of lightning that were instantly accompanied by loud cracks of thunder. I don’t mind saying that I nearly shit myself!  We were the tallest things on the moor for miles around, and given that I am nearly a foot taller Jas, I was clearly the closest approximation of a lightning rod this side of Edale. As the flashes of white light ranged about us, my mind raced through every peice of lightning related self preservation data I’ve ever read – don’t shelter under a tree (none anyway), or in a cave (even less of those), or where there is any surface water (c’mon brain, how stupid do you think I am?), until I finally remembered the recommended protocol, which is to place your pack on the ground, crouch on top of it with your feet together and tuck your head to your chest with your arms over it in a brace position. In the end though, we opted for the “walk a lot faster and hope that it blows over us” technique, to save us from the humilaition of being passed by Steve whilst perching on our packs like a couple of hooded dodo’s. All’s well that ends well I suppose, and before long we were inside the Nags Head at Edale, doing our best to consume its overpriced and incomparably average food.

As we were now resolved to find the flattest part of England, we invested in a couple of OS Explorer Series maps covering the whole of the Peak District and dropped into the fantastic Ye Olde Nags Head in Castleton, just south of Edale, to plan our route whilst the storm raged outside.  If you’ve ever owned an OS Explorer Series map you’ll know that there isn’t a table big enough in any pub in England to spread it out. Including the key and its ample margins, these maps are no less than 1.5 metres long by 1 metre wide and at a scale of 1:25,000 are brilliant for showing every road, lane, track, hedgerow, footpath and dog turd that you are likely to encounter.  The only problem is, however, that if you consult one in a wind stronger than a few knots it will unfold to its full bedsheet-like glory and flap around like a badly trimmed mainsail before installing itself around your face and neck in a scarf-like manner.  At this point you almost certainly forsake the manufacturers recommended fold-lines for an impromptu hand over hand rolling technique before attempting to insert it back into your map case in a manner akin to stuffing a sleeping bag into a business envelope.  To add insult to humiliation the scale is so large we walked across all £17 worth of map in under 4 days, which leads me to believe that these maps are far more suited to people with one leg significantly shorter than the other. For all of its drawbacks, however, they are undeniably the best aid for route- planning and navigation, and we are now mercifully in the land where 10m contour lines are no less than 500m apart!

After a day of exploring the Wedgewood Factory and Museum, just South of Stoke-on-Trent, we wild camped in the adjacent village of Barlaston.  A surprising highlight of our whole walk ensued when the villagers discovered our plans to use their park as our hotel – we were treated to the friendliest welcome and lively conversation at the local pub, before being given assistance in pitching the tent by a couple of local lads, Matt & Paul, who then fetched tea, beer and biscuits from their nearby homes and joined us for a tent-side picnic into the wee-small hours of the night.

We now find ourselves in Great Haywood. Tomorrow we join the Heart of England Way, then the Cotswold Way all the way to Bath.

On the other hand, running almost due south from Tan Hill, the quiet B6270 meanders gently downhill, like the string to the Pennine Way’s bow. In the process, it cuts at least three kilometers off the otherwise 27km hike to Hardraw. I can already hear the Pennine Way puritans drawing a hissing breath through clenched teeth, but when you’re 1000km through a hike and only half done, you don’t tend to stand on ceremony. Consequently, we immediately took the road walking option.

If you have ever seen the 80′s black comedy “An American Werewolf in London”, you will have some appreciation of what it was like walking down the narrow road that day across a desolate Yorkshire moor in a thick fog, a howling gale, and sideways rain that seemed insistent on puncturing corneas and lips and any other exposed body part. I couldn’t help but imagine the “Lamb & Slaughter” pub emerging from the fog. We would walk into it, of course, and fight to shut the door behind us in the face of the brutal weather. For a moment or two we would shake off our drenched clothes before looking up to find half a dozen locals staring up at us from a disturblingly small gene pool.
“Yurr nowt from round eerrr”, one of them would drawl.
“Yurr’d best be orn yurr way”, another would add “…’n don’t stray on t’moors!”

Of course, no such place materialised, and we managed to stay off the moors for long enough, until out of the mist appeared an old wooden signpost, declaring that Hardraw was a mere 8 miles away. Unfortunately though, the Great Shunner Fell was between us and it.

The ascent to the Fell was 2 miles through peat hags, into the wind, which had strengthened to somewhere in the range of monsoon and typhoon . But where in Scotland it was a case of fighting your way through with your legs submerged to the knee in a substance not unlike sump-oil, the good folk in charge of the Pennine Way have at least had the foresight to lay enormous flagstones end to end, all the way to the summit. Each of these stones must weigh 200kg and I cannot even begin to imagine how they manage to haul them up the fell and lay them so neatly cheek by jowl, but however they do it, it is very much appreciated.

We paused briefly at the top for a lunch involving instant noodles suspended horizontally from a fork at arms length – the scything wind delivering mouthfuls at a time into our awaiting eyes, necks, hair…and occassionally our mouths. Moderately restored, but adorned with some fetching noodley accessories we descended the fell with our heads down and our minds focussed on the Green Dragon Inn, which awaited below in Hardraw.

“We plan to make it by Christmas” – did Jasmin really say that to Lisa McCormick of BBC Radio Tees?

It was these winds that presumably attracted the marketing geniuses behind a well known British double-glazing company, when in the 1970′s it became the backdrop for a highly successful TV commercial featuring a feather gently falling inside the Inn’s newly installed windows, providing a dramatic counterpoint to the tempest raging on the moor outside.

More recently, in 2007, the Tan Hill Inn hit the headlines when it dared to tempt punters to its warming hearth for some home style fare by putting the words “feast” and “family” in a particular consecutive order which raised the hackles of Kentucky Fried Chicken, who had hitherto believed that such a phrase had been granted to them for their sole use under the auspices of a trademark lawyer, or act of God, or suchlike. Ultimately, after a media furore, it was the giant multinational that withdrew from the fight, licking it’s wounds with a new found appreciation for the unequivocal disparity between a home-cooked meal in a remote moorland pub and a bucket of greasy chicken.

As I write this, Tracy, the Inn’s energetic and prepossessing landlady, in whose veins runs the blood of comic genius, no doubt honed through years of dogged scrimmages with corporate adversaries, and from entertaining the various human flotsam that washes up, windswept and bedraggled from the moor, is engaged in battle with might of British Telecom over the matter of unsatisfactory broadband connection.

The inn itself oozes character, as much from its jocose collection of bar room paraphernalia and its wandering menagerie of assorted animal residents as for it’s understated sense of history. At any given time whilst enjoying your ale you’re likely to encounter a brace of kittens suckling the pub dog (with or without success), a pair of near-domesticated lambs (disturbingly for them, their names are Shish and Doner!) being herded around by a flock of noisy ducks, or a hen teaching her chicks how to scratch about for food.

In winter, Tan Hill has been known to get 8ft snow drifts, which explains the presence of a Hägglund BV206 All-Terrain Vehicle parked adjacent to it’s front door. I imagine that it has on many occassions taxied groups of eager punters up otherwise impassable roads for an evening of merriment and ale by the roaring peat fires, beside snow covered windows (double-glazed!). Shouldn’t that just be on everyone’s Christmas holiday agenda?

Actually, rumour has it that the unwritten rule of such far-flung pubs is that, during a blizzard lock-in, it is the pub’s responsibility to keep its customers warm and fed, so it’s more likely that the all terrain vehicle is used for getting people out rather than in!

We arrived with the intention to pitch our tent beside the inn, but the allure of a bunk bed in the staff quarters was far too enticing. And serendipity shined on us again when, during our rest day, a group of ten hikers turned up looking for lodgings, and we were turfed out of these modest lodgings in favour of an upgrade to a double ensuite room (complete with a TV, which I have completely forgotten how to switch on!). Jas repaid the favour with a hearty plug on BBC Radio Tees during a live interview given via mobile phone from outside the inn (a recording of this will soon be available on our blog, as are our two previous radio interviews).

Breakfast at the inn is a theatrical affair, like a French Farce with added bacon & beans. Its manic landlady will one moment rush from the kitchen door, calling after unseen staff, who follow soon after she has departed the dining room via another door, depositing baskets of hot toast at random tables on her way. Moments later, after the staff have returned, bemused and befuddled, from whence they came, she will reappear from a third doorway, still barking orders for more tea for table one, butter for table four, a lobotomy for table five, and so on. An unsuspecting diner, having arrived during her brief period of absence will, upon her reappearance, appeal for her attention with a politely raised finger before meekly enquiring about juice or muesli or milk or a fork or a table or any other breakfast related accoutrement. Tracy’s response will invariably be in the style of The Beadle from Oliver Twist when the poor wretch dared to ask for “more please”. This is all, no doubt, deliberate and partially choreographed, with the enthralled guests being merely bit players, feeding her prompts for additional opportunities to ad-lib. She perfectly finds that delicate balance between pure comedy and totally outrageous insults and, as a result, provides the most eccentrically energetic and enjoyable bed & breakfast experience in the country.

This pub is simply the best of British and we’ll struggle to summon the enthusiasm required to leave it, but tomorrow we walk 27km to Hardraw, mercifully downhill most of the way. We probably won’t walk past the Green Dragon Inn without going in…for research and comparison purposes only, of course!

(by Stuart Laurance)

www.tanhillinn.com

Please help us to raise much needed funds for Alzheimer’s research by donating at our Just Giving page

So when we arrived in the North of England, and walked into the aptly named “Twice Brewed Inn” with its bank of real ale hand-pumps, each extravagantly labelled with names that could only have been conjured by a brewmaster after an exhaustive pre-launch tasting session – Owd Head Thumper, Squirrel’s Scrotum or Badger’s Bollocks (or similar), I could have been forgiven if I had ordered five pints, downed them in quick time, jumped up on the bar and burped all 13 verses of God Save the Queen (I didn’t, but it was only my weariness from a 25km hike that prevented it!).

These blessings that are bestowed on the inhabitants of Northern England by the beer gods got me thinking about the realatively meager offerings in other parts of the country (namely London). There, English real ales seem to be offered almost as an afterthought, to appease the dying needs of aging men, usually going by the name of Arthur, or George, or Harold, who just haven’t “moved with the times” by succumbing to the bland and fizzy titilation offered by any number of mass produced lagers, alcho-pops, or cider with ice. But because of this patchy supply, it is actually quite rare to be served a hand-pumped real ale that still retains a fresh taste and a lively mouthfeel. In London, the chances are that your ale was poured from keg that was tapped days or weeks before it got anywhere near your lips. It’s no wonder, therefore, that they are struggling to compete!

The campaigners for real ale are not going to like me saying this, but I have a solution. Forget the kegs and the hand-pumped taps (I hear the collective sigh of a thousand weary barmaids with lopsided right arms!), which really are just archaic traditions, and just sell the stuff in bottles. By far the best real ales I’ve ever had have been poured from chilled glass bottles.

And yes, I said “chilled”. I realise that the development of real ales predates the invention of refrigeration and, indeed, calls for a warm fermentation process but why, for heavens sake, does that mean that they must be consumed tepid? I appreciate that many flavours are unlocked at higher temperatures, but I’ll let you in on a secret – the stuff warms up in your mouth…hell, it will even warm up in the glass, on the table, on its own, in front of your very eyes! But by serving it only marginally cool in the first place you deprive this thirsty hiker of one of life’s great pleasures – that very first moment when an icy cold ale hits the back of your throat!

So to all London pub landlords – if you must continue serving real ales from hand-pumped kegs, perhaps you could agree this very small compromise – either tap the keg only moments before I arrive in your pub (although I acknowledge that this may be a touch inconvenient), or reduce the size of your kegs to preserve freshness. I recommend that they be no more than 568ml, made of glass, with a cap seal lid!

If that’s not possible, at least take a leaf out of Northern landlord’s books and pour it through a spigot to give it a creamy head!

This would, I believe, bring the demand for real ale back where it deserves to be. The Belgians worked out decades ago that variety is the spice of life, and that a fridge with dozens of rows of interesting bottles is more far more appealing to a broad market than one stale beer from a lonely hand-pulled keg.

(by Stuart Laurance)

 http://lilredtent.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/newcastle.mp3

On the backbone of England, looking down towards the Tyne (shame about the fog!) Jasmin having a fun chat with Radio Newcastle live wire, Jonathan.

Jasmin and Stuart, crouching beneath a wet dry stone wall, half way up Cross Fell on the Penning Way in Cumbria, sounding amazingly cheerful talking to Mike Parr on a live broadcast.

Must be the news from Headingley!

An inadviseable proclivity for buying books and never offloading them after reading (the latest being a weighty account of the life of Robert the Bruce, purchased at Melrose Abbey for less than the price of entrance, which seemed to be a far better use of funds, and the ridiculously dense two-volume Pennine Way Guide by Tony Hopkins, which I purchased mainly for its handy Ordnance Survey maps, again to appease the skinflint in me), has added unwelcome additional weight to my pack. The inclusion of this excess reading material, as well as two extra litres of water (one in a bottle, the other impregnated into the fabric of our tent), and my pack now weighs, at a guess, somewhere between the equivalent of a large air-conditioning unit and the Tyne Bridge.

So with this burdensome cling-on clamped like a limpet to my back, we set out on our longest day yet – 32km – from Jedburgh to Byrness, a dwindling but welcoming conurbation about 10km south of the border. The first 22km, to England, were more or less a constant uphill slog along the old Roman Road known as “Dere Street”. Don’t let anyone tell you that the Romans built lovely straight roads, because this one seemed to find the apex of every hill, and took more twists and turns than the map had bothered to record (which was none, leading me to believe that the commonly promulgated notion about the lineal nature of Roman Roads was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy between the Empire and the cartographers of the day).

Once across the border, which was marked by a rather weathered, lichen encrusted gate, we set off along a 10km stretch of the Pennine Way that was so sodden under foot that we skated a great proportion of it (sometimes facing forwards and moving in the direction of our destination, but mostly backwards and away!). The last two kilometres into Byrness, whilst correctly depicted on the map as being dead straight, were precisely that because they failed to take the conventional approach of zig-zagging down, or even avoiding altogether, the preciptous and rocky escarpment above the town.

So that is how we ended up in Byrness in the fading light, with legs that felt like rotting fenceposts and vocabularies that could peel the paint off a pot-belly stove. The mood was not lifted by the realization that Byrness has no pub, however, before you could say “raze it to the ground”, a kindly local gentleman
with a strangely unscottish accent pointed us in the direction of the Youth Hostel, which also happened to hold the town’s only liquor licence (YHA-lleluja!).

So, a combination of petrified calf muscles and a linen cupboard stocked with no less than two dozen varieties of fine English real ales will hold us here for a rest day before continuing on to Bellingham tomorrow.

(by Stuart Laurance)

The trail from Linwater to West Linton is signposted as Thieves Road, and it takes you high over the equally evocatively named Cauldstane Slap, a barren pass over the Pentland Hills that was part of the favoured route for driving small cattle from the Highlands down to the markets in England. However, to add further to the dangers posed to the drovers by the exposed pass, the hills harboured all manner of thieves and rustlers. It is not known when it officially became known as “Thieves Road”, but I imagine that the Union of Cattle Thieves & Rustlers would have been up in arms and passionately petitioning the local council to give it any other name that didn’t quite so much give their game away.

We plodded our way up and over “The Slap” on a morning that promised very little in the way of sunshine, but by the time we were decending on the small but unbelievably picturesque hamlet of West Linton, the sun was providing enough warmth to encourage, nae oblige, a cold ale on the impressive, if not ambitious, rear deck of the Gordon Arms Hotel, which sits proudly overlooking the top of the town’s Main Street.

The old drove road continued on out of West Linton via a circuitous route past farmland, a small housing estate and a heavily wooded col, which could not have been in greater contrast to the barrenness of the Cauldstane Slap the previous day. Enroute we heard the distressed bleatings of a lamb that had managed to wedge its head firmly between a water trough and the wooden frame that supported it. It was on the other side of a barbed-wire fence-line, so I quickly de-packed, surveyed the situation and bravely pointed out to Jas the best point at which she could scale the fence. As I courageously stood supervising from a vantage point within metres of a bed of stinging nettles lining the fence that she was now across, Jas grabbed two handfuls of wool on the stout lamb’s shoulders, and pulled with every ounce of strength she had left after an already tiring walk. It soon became clear however that the damn thing was stuck fast, and any more pulling might have resulted in Jas lying flat on her back in the middle of the field with a freshly shucked lamb’s wool car-seat cover attached permanently to her fingertips. The situation called for a more scientific approach, so after some careful examination of the sheep’s cranial anatomy, and with plenty of silent encouragement from me, Jas decided that the best thing for it was to tilt his head and finagle his leathery ears out first. Proving her hypothesis, and using the same principle as in childbirth (so we hear), once the ears were out it was over in the shake of a happy lamb’s tail. The lucky little ovine fellow pranced away to the nearest ewe that resembled his mother, received a solid headbut and stumbled backwards, before regaining his composure, and continuing his noisy search as he disappeared over the crest of a hill.
“Well that’s our good deed done for the day!” I said to Jas, although she must have still been concerned for the lamb’s wellbeing because the look on her face did not match my sense of self-satisfaction, as she selfishly tended to her nettle-rash rather than bask in the glory of our mutually heroic endeavours.

We carried on down the trail to the larger but equally charming town of Peebles, where a rest day and a rendezvous with some friends from Glasgow awaited.

Refreshed from our rest, but mildly frustrated from yet another failed attempt at acquiring a decent steak pie, we left Peebles via an easy 12km hike along the very quiet B road to Traquair (pronounce it “Track Where”, or the locals will fire up their torches and sharpen their pitchforks!), beyond which a small log-cabin bothy awaited our arrival. On the way through the village we stumbled upon a hive of activity at the Traquair town hall, as the local cycling club was hosting a control point for an Audax Cycle Race from London to Edinburgh and back (the participants of which were even crazier than us, apparently!). The club had arranged for 40 doormat-sized frosted and cream-filled victoria sponge cakes to feed the more than 300 ravenous competitors on their way through, however, the early withdrawal of 200 of them, and the town hall’s decidedly inconvenient no cycling-cleat policy, had conspired to ensure that supply not just exceeded demand, but positively swamped it. This all worked in our favour as we were sent off to hike up the mountain to the bothy with arms full of cake and a sense of community spirit having done our bit to prevent Traquair from falling into a pseudo nuclear winter as a result of lying in the shadow of a cake-mountain. Upon arrival, the Minch Moor bothy was, regretfully, adorned on every square inch of its interior by the banal and mindless scribblings of a few local, tumshie-heided youths, but provided a dry and comfortable night’s sleep nonetheless.

In the morning we climbed further up the mountain to follow the old Minchmoor Road, which has been used by the likes of William Wallace (in fact it passes “Wallace’s Trench”, where the tall patriot with the Hollywood looks laid in wait for the Borderers, who were coming to join the fight), and Edward I of England, with his procession, in his early attempts to subjugate the vacant Scottish Crown (vacant, that is, save for the two year old Margaret, the Maid of Norway, who seemed more intent on splashing about the fjords than travelling to Scotland to take her throne), in the first of a series of events that helped to shape the Scot’s character and which manifests itself today in their overwhelming support for Australia in the Ashes (or as one chap said to me, Australia or anyone who plays England in the Ashes!).

On this day, however, there were no marauding insurgents or power hungry kings on the high ridge crossing the moor, but we did have to contend with a crosswind that was so strong that it could have blown a brown dog off its chain. As a consequence we struggled to stay on the path, and frequently stumbled into the adjacent heather, startling dozens of concealed grouse in the process, who would briefly take flight into the prevailing wind before quickly thinking better of it and executing a supersonic U-turn followed by a barely controlled flight down to the lee of the ridge.

It was by far the worst walking conditions we had encountered so far on our trek, so when we finally wobbled our way into Galasheils with windswept hair and jackets that had barely managed to stay in one piece, there was nothing for it but to dive into the nearest pub (a Weatherspoon’s) to delay our final four mile march to Melrose with yet another attempt to secure a half decent pie.

I am pleased to subsequently report that the Weatherspoon’s “Steak & Abbot’s Ale Pie” was the one that finally broke the drought, being fully enclosed in proper short-crust pastry and the size a shape of a common housebrick. It was the highlight of an otherwise taxing day, and we sat for hours afterwards, struggling to breath with the damned things lodged betwixt liver and pancreas.

If that wasn’t enough, the pride of Scottish piemanship was well and truly restored when we stumbled upon a bespoke butcher’s shop in Melrose which was displaying an innumerable range of proper, structurally correct pies of varying size, shape and content. At only 80p a go, and being completely unfettered by any need to count calories, we set about the task of demolishing as many as we could whilst sitting on the bench seat outside the shop, watching delivery men in white coats hump whole sides of beef from a waiting lorry onto their shoulders and into the shop (are we trapped in an ITV light drama?). It’s a bold statement, but the Scotch Pie, containing just lamb mince and seasoning with a peppery bias is my gastonomic discovery of the year.

Melrose itself is a wonderful place, but to avoid the possibility of being labelled a half-Scottish sycophant, I will merely state that it is sublimely pretty.

The downside of that is that we are firmly back in the tourist zone, resulting in the ever so slightly less genuine friendliness of the locals. This was no better demonstrated by my experience at the Ship Inn, which attracted me in with a sign advertising that they would be showing the cricket from 11.00am, but when I wandered in at 11.01am a humourless and monosyllabic barmaid greeted me like I was wearing a dogshit waistcoat, clearly upset that my arrival precipitated a last minute change to her plans for the first hour of her morning, that being that it would now comprise of one minute pouring me an ale and 59 minutes reading OK magazine and clearing her nose (hands-free, being a marginal blessing), rather than the full 60 minutes doing the latter.

But that’s not enough to put me off Melrose, whose pies have well and truly assisted me in my endeavours to lower my centre of gravity.

(by Stuart Laurance)